Mothers Day Classic 2010

Yes, that is a rare photo of just me you see to the side.  I don't usually do photos, but I figured today was a bit special.  For today was the Mothers Day Classic, my first ever fun run!  I woke up absolutely terrified.  In fact, I went to bed absolutely terrified.  LOL  Lets start with yesterday.  Yesterday we went out in the morning to do some shopping.  I wore my old grungy sneakers as I often do.  An hour or so out and I realise, they are causing blisters on the back of my heels.  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  So I took them off and finished the shopping in true Adelaide Bogan-style, in bare feet.  Thankfully my MIL is a Registered Nurse and has a multitude of dressings and bandages, and gave me some wicked dressings to cover them up.  Add my ankle braces to the mix and no rubbing today, thankfully. 

We got there bright and early, me completely terrified, Ross seemingly calm.  I say seemingly because after it was over he admitted he was scared about his lung holding up.  He was to run his own race and since he mainly runs at my pace he was concerned that even though it is over a year since his pnuemothorax that something would happen.  Thankfully, everything was A-OK.

In the last 20 minutes I went to the toilet 3 times.  The last time I think I squeezed out half a drip, but I seriously thought I needed to go.  They asked for the fast runners to go to the front and the slow ones to go to the back, which I was more than happy with.  Unfortunately I got caught up in the crowd and ended up somewhere in the middle.

I had asked Ross to run with me for 10 minutes, but 30 seconds before we crossed the start line I told him to run his own race, then we were off and I was on my own.  I was too close to the middle of the crowd, and although I pulled right over to the left I got swept up and struggled to find my pace.  Linda had said to me to make sure I didn't start out too hard, and that was going through my head, but there were too many people and I found it hard to slow down.  I ran up the first hill (even though I had decided to walk up every hill since I have not trained on them) and I ran it too fast.  The result, 750m in and I was hurting.

Thankfully it soon started to thin out and I could drop back to my shuffle pace.  I was still hurting though but kept plowing though until the next hill, then used that as an opportunity to catch my breath.  I was constantly getting overtaken, but I kept plodding along.  Despite the lungs screaming and the legs hurting, I only walked about 3 or 4 minutes in total, and I made it through with an unofficial time of 39 minutes, which is slightly faster than my normal pace.  I think my official time will be a bit longer coz they didn't zap me at the end right away to trigger my time finishing.

The end was awesome, all the walkers and those who had already finished the race were along the sides cheering, and Ross was there and ran along the edge with me for the last 50m telling me how awesome I am (gotta love hearing that!)  The marshalls were giving encouragement at every turn which was also great.  When I finished I truly couldn't breathe, but I recovered in quite a short timespan so I was happy with that.

I stretched out a bit, grabbed some water and some fruit a sat down to enjoy the morning.

Watching the walkers leave was amazing.  Check out the photo below,  If you make it bigger and have a look you can see the line of people all the way up along the river.  The last walkers were still going through the start line when the front walkers were on the other side of the river at the 2km mark.  It was an incredible sea of pink and purple surrounding the river and it was a truly awesome sight.

I am so glad I did this.  It was a 'safe' event for my first run because no one was taking it too seriously.  I learnt a lot (particularly to start at the back next time) and feel really proud that I completed it. 

Thanks so much to everyone for their support over the last few months.  I think you all believed I could do it long before I did.  And I really appreciate that.

xox

PS - I should add Ross did the 4km in somewhere around 20-25 minutes with very little training at his real pace.  My husband ROCKS!